I don’t think there are any of us here who think a functioning civil society is not a worthy goal. Nor do any of us suppose a functioning civil society doesn’t cost money. So all any of us would really disagree about is who should pay for it, and how much.
The large (or largish) western nations that display the most obviously functional civil societies all collect in tax, all in, a percentage of GDP right around 40 percent (and sometimes a few points higher).
The U.S., all in (federal, state & local) collects about 27 percent.
It’s true that we fund a significant chunk of our health care outside the tax system. But it is also true that a huge chunk of the private money we spend on health care is sucked up by profit (and for-profit admin). If we extended Medicare to all citizens, and funded every dollar of the cost with an additional dollar of tax, I don’t know how much that increase our taxes as a percentage of GDP, but I’m pretty sure it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 percent.
Of course we also spend vast amounts of money on our military: a level of spending close to which none of those other nations comes near.
Civil societies foster social cohesion with collective institutions that provide for the common good: roads, public transport, schools, fire and police protection, prisons, regulators to prevent illegal market manipulation and pollution, R&D into energy to replace fossil fuels, parks, etc. And of course the military.
Leaving out how we ought to provide our citizens with health insurance- which is a large and important argument- the political conversation in this country isn’t, despite all the endless rhetoric that assume exactly the case, between free-market capitalists on the one hand and socialist five-year-planners on the other. It isn’t really even about whether or not we should be using taxes to foster social cohesion with collective institutions that provide for the common good.
It’s only really about which institutions we should spend our tax money on in order to foster social cohesion.
Those of us on the so-called liberal left think the best way to spend the money is on things like roads, schools, public transport, fire and police protection, regulation, R& D, parks. Mostly soft domestic, gentle stuff like that. Maybe because we are, at heart, rather soft and gentle people.
Maybe.
Whereas those on the so-called conservative right prefer toll roads, private schools, no regulation, generally as little evidence of government funded civil society as possible, EXCEPT…
The military. Which is a HUGE provider of education, of R&D, of housing, of health care, of upward mobility, and of collective purpose and pride and personal and emotion identification with, and pride in, national purpose and identity.
Viewed as a collective economy, as a community, as a source of collective action and collective culture, the U.S. military is as socialist an institution as exists on this planet.
Of course what the military isn’t, quite patently isn’t, is democratic. Which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason the right doesn’t mind the idea of pouring money into the collective society of the military, in all its socialist aspects. Because the quid pro quo that we get for spending all those trillions on all those soldiers and sailors and pilots, and all their families and support staff and the whole industrial complex that provides for them is… obedience.
Yeah, I know, we get to sleep safe in our beds as well. Which brings us to the next point:
It’s kinda hard to justify such a humongous military without a humongous enemy, or at least without whipping up a humongous amount of fear that a humongous enemy just might be out there. Somewhere.
And fear on its own sometimes isn’t even enough. Sometimes you just got to pull those triggers. Which not only means we then can justify buying a whole lot more gear, but also always has the added advantage of guaranteeing a whole pack of enemies we often never had in the first place.
The right don’t feel comfortable with a welfare society, because they don’t see the payoff. You spend all that money building roads and schools and shit, and paying teachers and firemen and regulators out the whazoo, and what do you get in return? People who fucking think for themselves! And vote quite enough of the time for fucking Democrats!
But if you spend the money instead on a warfare society (which of course includes huge amounts of what in any other context would be stone welfare), when you say jump they fucking jump.
That’s the kind of ‘civil’ society the right can buy into. And the only kind. The trouble is, of course, that it isn’t civil at all.
I fear it will take a lot of money to help the poor woman but I’m happy to contribute.
I’d have to send cash to one of you to forward to her, because of the charges if I sent a pound cheque.
Stephen King rocks.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-king-tax-me-for-f-s-sake.html
OK Gunny I’ll admit that just because you come over as paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out get you – and me. But do you really think we are heading in that direction and that a French or Russian style revolution is inevitable unless we change course? And where would that course take us? Bluthner wants the state to control 40% of the economy for example.
Expat:
In the federal system that we have in the USA, 40 percent participation in the economy by “government” does not translate into any form of actual “control” to use your word, at least in any coordinated fashion.
The Fed’s are frequently at odds with the states, who are at loggerheads with county and municipal governments, and special districts have a particle of independence too.
OTOH, we see the agenda of the extreme right, such folks as Grover Norquist who wish to shrink the government until it can be rammed up inside the uterus of every fertile female.
That is not an invented meme – just last week, Gov. Brewer, she of the wagging finger, signed a bill to strip PP of any state funding for any purpose. That is just the latest in a series of extremist measures by that governor and her pals.
(Cross-seque to my post elsewhere – I think this is connected directly to the latest polls which put Arizona up for grabs in the Presidential race. The wimminfolks are becoming pissed off . . . )
But back on topic . . . . . before Gunny moderates my ass . . . . . the imbalance between the rich and the rest of us has become obscene again, as it was in the later 1800′s. So the pendulum will swing, in fact is already doing so. Witness the elections in both France and Greece.
I don’t think you read what wrote very carefully.
First, taxing 40% of GDP is in no way equivalent to ‘controlling 40% of the economy’.
Second, historically the number has been in the low to mid 30′s throughout your lifetime and nobody chopped off anyone’s head.
3rd, as Kev points out, that 40% includes government at all levels, which is hardly a monolith, in fact exactly the opposite.
And 4th, if you had read what I wrote you would know the only difference between historical levels and the full 40 is already being spent, just very badly, on health care, and will go on being so spent, only, if we could manage to wrestle the health insurance lobby into some kind of submission -which I have no belief that we will- just less wasteful and corrupt.
But go ahead and paint me as some kind of lunatic commie if it winds your watch.
In fact I’d go so far as to say that spending 40% of GDP on civil society is exactly how to avoid violent upheaval.
Who was it who said that as long as the American working classes had enough money to buy tires for, and put gasoline in, their cars, there would never be any danger of a revolution in the U.S? Point being: the view that having lots of money is a reward for virtue only really plays amongst those who have lots of money. You can run a culture on that theme tune, sure, but only so far. Money that isn’t so much earned as thieved -see Bain Capital- needs to get spread around enough to keep other less middle-brow theme tunes from catching on.
Surprised by both of you being sensitive to the word control. I wasn’t using it pejoratively. I never thought that it was anything other than descriptive and neutral.
What word would you use to describe how that portion of everyones time, talent and effort that is pooled and spent collectively by the governemnt is managed?
Or is goverment control on the poll tested Not to be Uttered During this Election Cycle List distributed to all operatives?
Which gets us back to what is an effective and fair proportion however we describe it.
Thinking of the “warfare society” . . . .and of lethal underwear . . .
Have you seen this?
I’ve semi-joked before that I’m waiting for the FBI to announce they’ve uncovered this and that and the other dastardly plot to blow up London during the Olympics.
And now this. Isn’t this going (has already) much too far? Why isn’t there anybody in the US who is calling for a halt to this seemingly constant never-ending parade of invented plots?
When you have the agencies which are supposed to protect the civil population from risks actually creating them without a single reprimand, without being called to account, without it being demanded they desist, that aspect of the policing of civil society has simply broken down.
This is just the kind of thing that was being done in Italy in the 70′s. If you can’t find sufficient causes for people to fear, create them.
Let’s hope in July we don’t have half the bloody FBI and CIA in London accusing the other half of planting bombs all over the damn place. And that the tame punditry of the security circus don’t start demanding (again!) that we aren’t tough enough over here and demand we strip-search everybody on the steps down to the Underground to look for suspicious underwear.
Bailouts to ‘failed states’ anyone?
Just found this interesting chart.
I’ve seen those figures before, of course, variously presented, but in isolation, not related to my part of the world. My god, if that was the EU (and the sort of ‘stimulus’ Germany and Benelux had to maintain) the Germans and Dutch really would be going spare.
And I keep reading all these pundits who, more or less, seem to think Greece or Portugal or whatever should be cut adrift, or are terminal cases. . .but they never mention the states in their own back yard?
Those ‘subsidies’ are stunning, aren’t they? And aren’t they mostly going to those states that seem to think they can ‘go it alone’?
Squirrel,
You are right to be suspicious as hell, given the long history we have had already of manufactured threats, Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ at the moment being the most frightening of them. But doesn’t the article to which you link, at least as it is written, say that the underwear bomb was built (sewn?) by a real bad guy, who was tricked into giving it to a U.S. agent?
So it could just be clever (an non lethal) undercover work. That’s what it seems to say in any case. If CIA had constructed the bomb, and then given it to Al. Q. to hand on to their own agent, that would be another matter entirely, but at least according to the article that is not what is described as having happened.
That said I’m sure those guys will be all over London in a not at all subtle way during the Olympics. Me I’m thinking if I can I am going to get a long way out of town.
Squirrel,
Re your chart: I think you’re about there. I’ve been thinking that someday I must gush that you appear to have acquired a truckload of nuance about the US that I didn’t see a couple years ago, and this seems as good a time as any to say it. It has always seemed to me that there are two kinds of journalists: those who write what they already think, and those who go out and learn more and then write about what they’ve learned. Acorns to you.
Now, for the cherry on top of this particular epiphany, compare this chart (and its more complete, less summarized sources) with, one, Sarah’s informal list of the states where real Americans live, and, two, Mr. Dog’s list of the places businesses should move to in order to rebalance the tyrannical waste/prosperous penury equation in American life.
Since time began there has been rich and poor. The poor on the whole accept it. Each to his own and all that, as long as there’s a job that puts food on the table and a roof over the kid’s head’s…
What happens though, is that the rich as ever, fail to understand that we might be poor but we aren’t stupid. When taking the p–s is so in your face we can’t ignore it, that’s when there are huge swings in the political spectrum, and if that doesn’t work, uprisings.
Di
They don’t think most people are stupid, they know that most people are ignorant, burdened, distracted, disorganized, short of funds and therefore…. constructively powerless.
People have the vote and don’t use it. That does seem kinda stupid. But how much do you have to piss people off before they will actually git up and get out and vote? And how stupid would it be to piss people off that much? Pretty stupid I guess, ’cause they don’t make that mistake very often.
Bluthner:
Sorry, but they don’t attribute any of those feelings to us, because they hardly think about us at all. Except that is, when we don’t do as we’re told and dare to put our heads above the parapet. And then, as we’ve seen, they totally ignore us and carry on regardless…
Did your read about Ian Duncan Smiths replies to the severely</mentally and physically disabled people he's said have to apply for regular jobs in the workplace because he's closing their subsidised workshops? He told them we couldn't have everything we wanted… And he's supposed to be a Christian…
And so far we don't have anyone with the charisma to make us believe again…
I have always voted because I believe it's the one time we can influence what happens to society, but last year [our local elections are next year] I nearly didn't bother.
Over the years with the advent of the internet which gives us a far broader and honest view on how politicians are doing their jobs, people have gradually lost faith and are disheartened because there is little to choose between them.
The feeling is why should I empower one dick head over another dick head!
Di -
The feeling is why should I empower one dick head over another dick head!
Feel your pain.
Yeah, we all feel that, most of the time I would imagine, but….
Down that road lies Dick Cheney. He bet people would that way, and he won.
And we all lost. Hugely.
So we have to go on holding our noses and voting for the least worst. It really does matter. But you guys know that.
I remember during the fifties. There was only one TV in the street, so the politicians really did come around the streets with their soapbox.
I remember standing under a gas lamp listening to speeches and enjoying the heckling, especially when a Tory was trying to get a foothold in our very working class neighbourhood.
The local Labour party though was very active. They held socials and all sorts of get togethers to raise funds; they borrowed front rooms on election day where volunteers could check off those who had voted, housewives made countless cups of tea for the volunteers and the few people that had cars ferried the elderly to the polling stations and cars plastered with posters and streamers in party colours, toured the streets reminding us to vote over screeching loud hailers. The air was electric, and of course as our polling station was in the school right across the road we had the day off…
Councillors regularly went from house to house to see if there was anything they could do for you even when it wasn’t election time and they had direct contact with our MP.
It was like family.
Nowadays all they’re interested in is getting your vote without putting in any effort. And God forbid you have a problem that should come under their remit…You’re just a damn nuisance….
I’m interested in politics and try to keep up to date, but there are a lot of people that aren’t. Those are the ones that need to be motivated. Eventually it’ll dawn even on them, what’s happening, and that’ll get bums off couches.
The only thing that gives me heart is after Thatcher punishment, and then the disaster of Major’s term in office, people had woken up and were sick of it, so they voted in far greater numbers than usual, and Tony Blair nearly wiped the Conservatives out.
I don’t mind Ed Milliband. He larks that spark that we need in a politician, but he’s young, and although he comes from a wealthy background I think he tries, and will hopefully loosen up a bit.
He’ll never be able to connect with those at the bottom simply because you need to live it to understand it, but it doesn’t disqualify him. Empathy, which is very important, can’t be bought or learned. You have to be born with it, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
NAT: Aaaaw!
Could have been an American squirrel, you know. Relatives there (from Vermont) wanted to adopt me when I was a very young squirrel. But I didn’t want to leave my mum.
I was only eight, but I’d guessed something had been in the air for a few weeks, only I thought it was going to be a long holiday from school, and I was quite excited. It was a bit of a shock to be told it was going to be permanent. I had a couple of weeks to decide, which were probably the oddest I’ve ever spent. I could tell my mum thought I’d be much better off, but didn’t tell me why, exactly;
I actually really liked my would-be-adoptive mum (she was my grandmother’s youngest sister, who’d emigrated) and I liked the idea of having a dad around. (Especially one who smelt of nice cigars!) And I was quite fascinated by the idea of gaining three brothers, though at 8 I didn’t realise they were from his first marriage and would be so much older than me they probably wouldn’t have figured much.
Often wondered how differently I might have turned out. (I didn’t actually find out until I was 17 that he was a millionaire oil man, so I suppose I’d have become a Trust Fund Squirrel?) But also an ex-Democrat Senator whose political career ended very quickly, because — didn’t find this out until I was 17, either — he had some kind of run-in with Joe McCarthy. And thereafter spent a lot of time in Canada — Sasketchewan of all places — instead of the family home in Vermont.
So I might still have ended up a pinko commie Yankee squirrel after all. Instead of being one of the few (probably infinitesimal number of half-English, half-Italian) kids who knew how to pronounce Sasketchewan from the age of 8 . . .
Ralph Flanders?
Much has been said (especially by the apologists for the losers) about the low turnout in our local elections and people not bothering to vote.
But . . .the Thatcher Tories began to make local government here subordinate to central government, and New Labour carried on; everyone knows that local government in Britain hardly has the power to do anything significant any more.
I mean, when just a week before the elections the LibDems send me a leaflet and the headline ‘news’ is that the LibDem councillors of my ward have succeeded in the troublesome and arduous toil of getting a pair of yellow lines on the street round the corner extended by two metres and claim this is some amazing political victory achieved for the residents . . .and this is a shining example of democracy at work against the evil forces of Tory oppression, and this is why you should be voting for them . . .
(I’ve been looking, I walk along that damn street nearly every day, and I’m blowed if I can see the extra two metres of yellow line. And nor can I see what the purpose was. I know what one effect must have been: and that’s to take away one resident’s parking space when there aren’t anywhere near enough places for locals to park their cars anyway, for which they pay — I think — 70 quid a year.)
But . . .who’s to say that the 30-odd per cent of the people who voted aren’t actually proportionately as representative as they would have been if 80 or 100 per cent of voters had?
Only the losing politicians, who always try to derive the last crumb of comfort from the idea: by and large, the vote corresponded with the feeling expressed in the opinion polls. The time to worry is if there’s a low turnout and it’s only the real bastards like the BNP supporters turn up at the polling stations.
Which mercifully, and conspicuously, didn’t happen.
No-one turned up on my doorstep. And the only one who did on my friend’s street (much posher) was a LibDem canvasser.
Who asked if she intended to vote. . .which she did: Labour. ( I asked if she’d given him an earful, but she said she hadn’t the heart, he sounded so forlorn, dispirited and hopeless. More of a desperate cry for help than a canvass.) But he asked about her husband’s vote. So she almost snapped. “Labour too. This time,” she said. “He’s not making the same mistake twice!”
Exeunt.
Squirrel,
115 pounds these days! To park in Westminster in any case.
What an astonishing decision for an 8 year old to be asked to make. They must’ve thought you were a wise old nutkin even then.
I had no canvassers at my door, but an elderly woman called on evening, sounding a bit drunk, to ask if Boris could still count on my support Boris. As I make a point of never discussing my vote with anyone from any party, I found her assumption deeply offensive on the mere face of it, never mind the politics. And told her so. Oh dear, she said, people keep saying things like that to me.
Maybe she was really Labour. If Obama got an impressionist to pretend to be Frothy, and used that voice to robo call every voter in America saying how pleased he and the Almighty were feeling that you were on our side and voting for our boy Willard – that might really get out the vote.